Tag Archives: Health

‘The Vaccine Race: How Scientists Used Human Cells to Combat Killer Diseases’ by Meredith Wadman is an account of the history, science and ethics of vaccine development in the United States. It primarily concerns the career of American anatomy professor Leonard Hayflick and his quest to find and mass produce the safest human cells for use in vaccines at a time when viruses such as polio and rubella were far more prevalent than they are today. Continue reading →

‘With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial’ by Dr Kathryn Mannix is a collection of anonymised patient case studies (or “stories” as Mannix calls them) drawn from her thirty years of experience as a palliative care clinician and consultant. It has been shortlisted for this year’s Wellcome Book Prize which I am shadowing with fellow book bloggers Rebecca, Laura, Annabel and Paul and is notably similar to one of the previous winners It’s All In Your Head by Suzanne O’Sullivan in that it seeks to demystify one of the most misunderstood aspects of medicine. In this case, it is death – the event that we will all one day meet (unless the transhumanists Mark O’Connell wrote about in To Be a Machine have their way…).Continue reading →

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize, ‘Mayhem’ is Sigrid Rausing’s family memoir about drug addiction. Her younger brother and heir to the Tetra Pak fortune, Hans Kristian, met American businesswoman, Eva Kemeny, when they were in rehab together in the late 1980s. They later married and became well-known philanthropists based in London. However, they relapsed and in 2007, Sigrid was granted custody of Hans and Eva’s four children. In July 2012, Hans was stopped by the police after driving erratically through London and was found with drugs in his possession. When the police searched his Belgravia mansion, they discovered Eva’s remains hidden under a mattress. She had been dead for approximately two months. Continue reading →

On Sunday, I attended two Jewish Book Week events at Kings Place in London. The first was Adam Kay and Rachel Clarke in conversation with Daniel Glaser about their experiences as NHS junior doctors and the second was a discussion with novelists Francesca Segal and Amanda Craig chaired by Claire Armitstead.

‘This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor’ is based on Adam Kay’s experiences working in NHS hospitals from 2004 to 2010 specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology. It’s fair to say his book isn’t for the squeamish reader – the “degloving” incident is among the most memorable as is the Kinder Surprise story which Kay also read out loud to the audience. The title is apt – much of it is painfully funny while other parts are achingly sad and the ending in particular comes as an abrupt shock. Kay decided not to continue his medical career as a result of this tragic incident and it was the junior doctors’ strike years later in 2016 which compelled him to share his experiences. Kay and Clarke agreed that the term “junior doctor” is unhelpful – it implies someone in their early 20s straight out of medical school but it also applies to doctors on the verge of becoming consultants with multiple postgraduate qualifications and many years of experience. Continue reading →

This year’s Wellcome Book Prize longlist has been announced today. The twelve books are:

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer’s by Joseph Jebelli Plot 29: A Memoir by Allan Jenkins The White Book by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith) With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial by Kathryn Mannix Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’ConnellI Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death by Maggie O’Farrell Mayhem: A Memoir by Sigrid Rausing Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky The Vaccine Race: How Scientists Used Human Cells to Combat Killer Viruses by Meredith WadmanContinue reading →

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed The World by Laura Spinney probably isn’t what most people consider to be cosy festive reading over Christmas but it is somewhat seasonal. Much of what has been written about the Spanish flu tends to focus on the impact it had on Western countries in the aftermath of the First World War but Spinney’s book is a refreshingly global account of how the virus reached all corners of the earth from Alaska to Rio de Janeiro to Samoa to China. Estimates remain vague but the Spanish flu is believed to have killed at least 50 million people worldwide, possibly as many as 100 million, and its rapid spread is likely to have been partly exacerbated by soldiers returning home at the end of the First World War. Continue reading →

The last event I attended at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Monday was Maggie O’Farrell in conversation with Hannah Beckerman. The discussion during the first half focused on her latest novel This Must Be The Place which I read last year while the second half explored her new book and first work of non-fiction ‘I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death’ which is published in the UK this week. Continue reading →